i always want to start all over again

no wonder i never get anywhere! how can i become a genius if i always begin again, go back to basics, the primitive sources, trying the correct all the mistakes i've made later? trouble is, the ecstasy  is in beginning. poetry, for example, i remember the excitement of discovering it, of simply not understanding its language. for six months i tripped on it, hiking a sierra trail and hiding behind trees to avoid people. how  thrilling to find my first poetic image coming from myself. "the dead branches curled up like ibex horns."

okay, not a fantastic image, i grant you, but my own. i began to see correspondences, resemblances, and reading lots of books, i discovered all poems about love and death, that the key to their cryptic inscriptions. for forty years the impulse kept pounding through me. finally, when i could no longer fall in love, idealize a human woman as the muse, i came sadly to the end of it. all i can do now is philosophize. what a poor substitute! 

yes, i want that thrill of discovery back, like alfred hitchcock did when he made psycho. he renewed himself by putting everything he had on one cast of the dice. what if i did move to australia, dashed my past, adopted a new name, pretended i'm younger than i am, could i recapture my discovery of the stage, six months of going to at least two shows a week, often the same one, in the foggy streets of san francisco? after thirty years at it i could be sure of writing a workable play and directing an exciting production. 

alas, so many things i like to do only once: make a movie, go to russia, choreograph a dance. not exactly false starts, they fulfill a certain impulse immediately, usually when i'm not enamoured of the process. and what shall i do now? yes, i have a special insight into acting. damn, i never wanted to teach and have to repeat myself like a parrot. the same with being a parent. all those basic questions i ask myself, how could i ever have the answers for a child?

ah, i know it's all a desire for the wonder of learning to spell dog and sailing away under my own steam on a bicycle for the first time. those initial triumphs, nothing like them. can i kid myself again and say,   i don't really have arthritis in my spine and in reality, my kidneys operate at full capacity.  can i pull the wool over my eyes, wear rose-colored glasses, chug enough viagra to put my primary organs back in order? perhaps, perhaps, if life were only mind over matter. maybe it is and i just can't remember it, and that's why i need to learn to spell dog all over again. 


              let's give those transformations a review:

              http://www.pbase.com/wwp/spite

                                                                                            Andre' Gide

"We shall cool the black sun/Of its savage, insomniac passion." (Osip Mandalstam)

Pagan Spring:  
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/pagan


"Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And, even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it."

                                                                                                    Marriane Moore 

hmm, what is privacy, anyway?

  "The internet broke the private-public wall: Impulsive and inelegant utterances that used to be kept private are now available for literal interpretation."
                                      Nassim Taleb

Fracturing the light: a government snooping program called 'Prism.'

If everything were known about you, what would happen?

Are they also looking for acts of generosity?

These huge technological companies are the government. 

The problem has become too much information. 

Tell them more than they want to know, it will confuse them.

You got out of the draft by telling them you wanted to kill people. 

Type is hype. 

Can technology keep ahead of our stupidity?

Personal privacy may be far important to the state than it realizes.

Privacy equals vitality. 

We've always complained no one listens to us. Now we're upset when we find out the government does. 

Am I really that interesting? Who would care to know so much?

Americans aren't very sensitive to silence.

Of course, there's always the danger a confused government will harm innocent people. 

Innocence is done by the young, and practised by the aged. 

Innocence is relative to your point of view. 

The extreme right would control my actions, the extreme left my thoughts.

Terrorist vocabulary used to advertise every thriller, horror, mystery movie made.

A therapist doesn't have the freedom of a psychic. 

The extreme left makes the personal political in order to invade the deepest recesses of our being. 

An inefficient government leaves the people free.

Don't make an institution your parent. They don't know love. 

Increasing knowledge expands delusions. 

Guilt comes from unshared knowledge. 

Those who say thank you don't need to pray.

The heart of America is invention. 

By the time we got to the other side he'd learned to paddle. 


     "The very act of observing disturbs the system"

                                                                         Werner Heisenberg. 

9/11 letters (excerpts) oct. 24 - nov. 26, 2001:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/nine

i have to keep reminding myself i am not a robot

How hateful my tenuous survival depends upon these multitudinous factors:

The 100,000 miles of blood vessels of my body.

My blood travelling 50,000 miles a day. 

30 trillion cells.

DNA, which stretched out would go to the moon and back 6,000 times. 

The 100 million neurons of my brain. 

My kidneys pumping 400 gallons of blood a day.

Taking 5 million footsteps a year.

More bacteria in my mouth than people on earth.

2 million red blood cells dying every minute.

My ribs moving 5 million times a year.

My eyes actually part of my brain, 1/6th exposed. 

My heart beating 5,000,000 times in my lifetime. 

20 million cells in every square inch of skin.

As an early fetus, neuron growth being 250,000 each minute. 

Losing 100 hairs a day. 

My nose smelling 10,000 odors.

My eyes perceiving 500 shades of grey.

My tongue having a unique print.

11,000 liters of air a day.

5 million white blood cells.

My skin losing 600,00 particles every hour.

My liver, 96% water, completing 500 different processes!

My digestive system processing 50 tons of food and liquid.

300 muscles helping me to stand still.

An 8 lbs head with 500,000,000,000 atoms. 

45 miles of nerves in my skin.

My spine working with 100 joints, 120 muscles, and 220 ligaments. 


And that's just the beginning. Now I'm looking for a brain transplant! Can you help?


   Reference: Robots Have no tails, a play. 1964, the subject preying on my mind for almost 50 years:

            http://www.pbase.com/wwp/robot

Thank you! Thank you! My prayers immediately answered. 

if you fall in love with a process, you'll have a good life

Failure has gotten a bad name, 

hanging out in all the wrong places, 

joining gangs of hoodlums, wearing 

leather. Failure doesn't know how

to improve his image, even when 

we'd all love to love him. I met 

Falure last night playing jazz

in a seedy bar. I said to him, 

"Failure, you've got a problem." Failure

said, "I don't have a problem, I am

a problem, my own worst enemy.

Everybody tells me, 'Get a coat and tie, 

clean up your act. Even if you can't 

be a success, act like one. 'Do you know 

how much I hate all those successes

driving their fancy cars, going home

to wives and dogs, loving their children

because it makes everything go so

easily? No, I'm not about to get braces 

on my teeth. I have no intention 

of getting a shampoo and shave, let alone

shining my shoes. Failure is its own

reward, it gets you out of the game.

Now I can play my trumpet like nothing

else in the world mattered. I can search 

for the perfect note in the void, having 

eliminated all superfluous sounds." Yes,

I left Failure leaning up against the bar

with a smile on his face, and I felt

ashamed of myself. I still wanted success, 

to be like everybody else, though I knew now

the true price that must be paid. 

                 Selected Poems: 

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/poems2 

Americana: little life-lessons to ignore

He had a really nice funeral but he didn't enjoy it. 

Happiness can only lead to tragedy.

The interesting thing about sex is it's not interesting.

Someday you'll be free from thinking you matter.

Husbands can only be raised in captivity.

The idealist doesn't look when crossing the street.

Embrace delusion, it's your only hope.

Ecstasy: enjoying yourself when you know better.

Sometimes you have to deny yourself the pleasures of scratching.

Calling your mother on your deathbed - can she save you from oblivion again?

Every time I felt sorry for myself, I knew  I merely wanted my mother.

She never suspected the secret: hamburgers.

He became so enlightened he blinded people. 

Why should you believe in yourself? You don't exist.

The only cycle I ever found was bi.

I rose to low expectations.

In making mistakes children learn everything.

Therapists can't dance.

She was sure he loved her until he tried to. 

I'm someone who's passed from innocence to ignorance.

Hippos are not nice guys.

We need to learn to forgive the victims.

Every step you take changes your future. 

Sure, you can make a choice, if you want to be wrong.

He finally felt safe enough to be somebody else.

                                          Americana: glenn county fair: 

                                           www.pbase.com/wwp/glenn  

i'm chagrined. it's not the first time. i talked about myself way too much, telling many things i'd never told anyone. now, of course, i'm embarrassed. being old, you should be wise, exclaimed one of king lear's nasty daughters. alas, it really doesn't seem to work that way. i know better than to reveal the soul and overwhelm a listener with personal details. who wants to hear them, really?as they say, i forgot myself, even while elucidating an autobiography. of course, i know the truth can never be told. any honesty about ourselves a distortion. 

i guess that's a good example of overdoing it. the source, to impress, the explosion of latent ambition. along with most people, i believe i can become somebody. fat chance. the most i can do is amplify what i've been given, broadcast it as though something totally new in the world. can i really be a creative person without feeling i'm a god? after all, poetry the short-hand of heaven, love and death on the same plane, a cryptic translation of a canonical text, a successful reduction of our dualistic language to the one-celled creature we once were, swimming in the brine. 

actually, i need to celebrate my tutor from college who recently died, jack gilbert. here are a couple of articles:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/12/entertainment/la-et-jc-jack-gilbert-20121112

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/jack-gilbert

he certainly was stubborn, in a good and inspiring way, i think. 

and that brings me back to being. i discovered the other day, feeling like i could just sit still and soak up nature for the rest of my life, basically doing nothing,  i felt like a fully-grown man, a most unusual state-of-being! unfortunately, it didn't last. my nervous energy asserted itself, the searcher, the explorer, the person who's always believed he'd find the truth of existence somewhere, in a movie, a book, a guru, the bad cat of ambition bristling. 

okay, i have had a realization.  a life without romance a dead, meaningless one. going thru old love letters, i understood those encounters enlivened me, brought out the spontaneous and foolish child, who enjoyed being totally ridiculous and off the wall, emotionally over the top, blinded by the glitter and sweep of goddesses. settling down cost me my vision, my willingness to be uncomfortable. no wonder i could throw out a truck-load of diaries kept in this town. 

as everyone knows, circulation, of all kinds, the key to a vibrant existence, and nothing sends the blood pumping like the wonderful illusion of love. not true love, certainly, where you encourage the best in a mate, rather an attempt at ecstasy, doomed to fail and be revived with someone else who seems descended from olympus, until i see the human being (disappointed) inside. since the soul-mate may never arrive, at least i've suffered the touch of magic,  to feel i've lived and have the will to go on, to try again, even though the odds of the house are all on its side. 

Searching For Pittsburgh

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically
along three rivers. The authority of them.
The gritty alleys where we played every evening were
stained pink by the inferno always surging in the sky,
as though Christ and the Father were still fashioning the Earth.
Locomotives driving through the cold rain,
lordly and bestial in their strength. Massive water
flowing morning and night throughout a city
girded with ninety bridges. Sumptuous-shouldered,
sleek-thighed, obstinate and majestic, unquenchable.
All grip and flood, mighty sucking and deep-rooted grace.
A city of brick and tired wood. Ox and sovereign spirit.
Primitive Pittsburgh. Winter month after month telling
of death. The beauty forcing us as much as harshness.
Our spirits forged in that wilderness, our minds forged
by the heart. Making together a consequence of America.
The fox watched me build my Pittsburgh again and again.
In Paris afternoons on Buttes-Chaumont. On Greek islands
with their fields of stone. In beds with women, sometimes,
amid their gentleness. Now the fox will live in our ruined
house. My tomatoes grow ripe among weeds and the sound
of water. In this happy place my serious heart has made.

Jack Gilbert

flowers: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/vovflower

and more flowers: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/iris